Hi Mark,  Back in the early 1970s I worked for Douglas Berryman at
The West Cornwall Museum of Mechanical Music.  At that time Douglas
acquired the remaining stock of Canon Wintle's collection.  Most of
it, in my opinion, was a pile of junk, but an optimistic Doug saw
a long line of restored or newly created pianos rising like phoenix's
out of the ruins.

There were hundreds of key frames, soundboards, wrest planks, hitch
plates, sides, tops, bottoms and sacks and sacks of pins, a re-pinning
frame, a copying frame, and millions of scale sticks, as the Canon was
not adverse to changing the piano scales and re-pinning them with new
tunes; he could be seen regularly outside the Marks & Spencer store
in Diss, playing to the passersby.

Myself and Peter White churned out about a dozen restored pianos and
some were on carts made by us as well.  It was a soul-destroying job
rebuilding the key frames and replacing lost or broken pins on the
barrels.  In fact, I often thought of slitting my wrists, it was so
mind-boggling-ly boring.  Happily, a large portion of the parts got
moved to a storage unit in Penzance, where the tenant in the unit
below ours committed arson and so most of the Wintle parts were lost.
Thank God!

In recent times when there is a posting on MMD requesting help and
advice on barrel pianos I always recommend a gallon of petrol and
a box of matches.  There may be other recollections; mail me -- I'll
tap the grey cells a bit harder,

Cheers,
Paul Camps (retired restorer, Ashorne Hall Collection)